The jamming of colloidal particles at interfaces has been disclosed for the fusion and coalescence of liquid drops, and the generation of “bijels”, pointing to the importance of jamming to freeze-in, or solidify, otherwise liquid structures. See, e.g., A. B. Subramaniam, M. Abkarian, L. Mahadevan, H. A. Stone, Nature, 438, 930 (2005); A. B. Subramaniam, M. Abkarian, L. Mahadevan, H. A. Stone, Langmuir, 22, 10204 (2006); A. B. Pawar, M. Caggioni, R. Ergun, R. W. Hartel, P. T. Spicer, Soft Matter, 7, 7710 (2011); K. Stratford, R. Adhikari, I. Pagonabarraga, J. C. Desplat, M. E. Cates, Science, 309, 2198 (2005); E. M. Herzig, K. A. White, A. B. Schofiel, W. C. K. Poon, and P. S. Clegg, Nature Materials, 6, 966 (2007); M. E. Cates, P. S. Clegg, Soft Matter, 4, 2132 (2008); A. D. Dinsmore, M. F. Hsu, M. G. Nikolaides, M. Marquez, A. R. Bausch, D. A. Weitz, Science, 298, 1006 (2002); Y. Lin, H. Skaff, T. Emrick, A. D. Dinsmore, T. P. Russell, Science, 299, 226 (2003); J. Zhang, R. J. Coulston, S. T. Jones, J. Geng, O. A. Scherman, C. Abell, Science, 335, 690 (2012); E. Brown, N. Rodenberg, J. Amend, A. Mozeika, E. Steltz, M. R. Zakin, H. Lipson, H. M. Jaeger, PNAS, 107, 18809 (2010). Mahadevan and Stone disclosed fusing two fluid droplets between two planar surfaces, thereby generating an ellipsoidal drop in which interfacial jamming of colloidal particles arrested relaxation of the droplet prior to it reaching its equilibrium spherical shape. Clegg and Cates disclosed generating “bijels” in a water-lutidine system, wherein colloidal particles segregating to the interface of a mixture undergoing spinodal phase separation jammed, thereby freezing-in a bicontinuous morphology, possibly a new state of matter. Poon and coworkers disclosed arrested droplet coalescence when colloidal particles are jammed at an interface.
The wetting conditions necessary to assemble colloidal particles at the interface are demanding, consequently limiting the long-term stability of the assemblies thereof, and the unique fluid structures possible. The requirements for neutral wetting conditions are even more critical for nanoparticles, where the gain in the interfacial energy of each nanoparticle is close to thermal energies. Further, the use of colloidal particles limits the minimum size of the fluid domains achievable, consequently, only nanoparticles allow access to smaller size scales. Even if the demanding wetting criteria were to be met, prior disclosures did not address a means or method for creating and preserving a particular shape to the fluid domains.
Liquid-liquid assemblies have been the subject of intensive research and development. Nonetheless, there remains a continuing need for stabilized nanoparticle assemblies having arbitrary (non-equilibrium), yet controlled morphologies, and methods for the preparation of such assemblies.